A joint event put on by the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) and the Festival of the Peripheries (FLUP) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is commemorated in an anthology published by Kegedonce Press.
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refers to a stereotype about Asians, even Blacks, so why did you choose that title?
NP: “Coconut” is a racial slur that as you mentioned has been used in many ways to denote someone who is “white on the inside.” Growing up, I felt both harmed by the erasure of my Indian identity by white folks as I conformed to whiteness, and then faced backlash from Indian folks for doing so. I wanted to reclaim this word and show that if I am to be a “coconut,” then this book is what a coconut looks like, in all its complexities. There’s no one way to be Indian, or Asian, or brown those are just the ways that I am, and the things that make me who I want to be.